Web links for 9th November 2011

Children's Society report shows that children's happiness is strongly linked to whether or not they suffer material deprivation; children who lacked five or more material items were five times as likely to be unhappy. This really ought to be important for a government that is so concerned about whether we're happy.

According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation/KPMG "Report on Jobs", employment agencies reported a small fall in permanent placements in October. On the other hand, "a further modest increase in temporary/contract staff billings was recorded": as Left Foot Forward has noted, this rather undermines claims that the Agency Workers' Directive was going to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs: http://tinyurl.com/bpa4zq2

A report from Volunteering England says that WP providers are refusing to contract with Volunteer Centres for their services – but happily refer clients to get them free. At the same time funding is being cut and demand is rising … roll on the Big Society!

Along with the widely reported downgrade in forecast growth for 2012 from 2.2 to 1.2 per cent, there's the worrying prediction that business investment will grow by 6.9 per cent, down from their previous forecast of 9.3%.

Yet another depressing business confidence survey: Index sinks to lowest level since recession, biggest fall since the survey began in 2005, increased jnumber of businesses operating below capacity, hardly anyone reporting recruitment as an obstacle, salary growth to stay very low. The authors say it suggests the economy will shrink by up to 0.2% in Q4 2011.